Anger has greeted Copenhagen Zoo’s decision to put down a healthy young giraffe, then feed the corpse to lions after conducting a public autopsy watched by children.

The killing of Marius, a two-year-old reticulated giraffe, took place Sunday morning despite a flood of protest and adoption offers from other wildlife parks.

Marius died via a shot from a bolt pistol, rather than by lethal injection, to avoid contaminating the meat, zoo officials said. The animal was then dismembered in front of a crowd, and the process streamed live on the internet.

More than 27,000 people signed an online petition to save the animal, and one private individual was prepared to pay 500,000 euros (about $680,000) to buy and take him in. But the zoo turned down all offers and went ahead with the euthanization — leading to an outcry.

Zoo officials have even received death threats, but view the public protest as “totally out of proportion,” saying it had “gone too far.”

The Danish zoo said it had to do away with the male giraffe, which it had raised from birth, to avoid the risk of inbreeding. The animal lacked the right genetic makeup, according to Holst.

“Giraffes today breed very well, and when they do, you have to choose and make sure the ones you keep are the ones with the best genes,” he told the BBC.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park, contacted Copenhagen Zoo with a proposal to rehome the giraffe, but didn’t hear back before hearing about its death in the media. It told The Huffington Post it was “saddened” by the news.

Other wildlife-preservation outfits and experts took a stronger tone, criticizing the Danish zoo’s stance. They challenged the need to kill the animal, rather than give it contraceptives or keep it separate to prevent it from breeding.

Copenhagen Zoo has posted a Q&A to lay out its reasons for turning down alternatives, but this has not mollified protesters, who are calling for a boycott of the zoo. Even those in the wildlife business were urging a rethink to conservation guidelines.

“I can’t believe it. We offered to save his life. Zoos need to change the way they do business,” Robert Krijuff, head of a wildlife park that made a last-minute offer for Marius, told the BBC.

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